Saturday, February 28, 2015

Surely there’s some significance in the fact that Leonard Nimoy’s death intersected precisely with the death of the Internet as we know it. And even if not, it might serve as a good opportunity to review another timeless intergalactic morality play about an Emperor who ruled the universe by fiat. Spoiler Alert: that one didn’t end well, for the Emperor.

Butt enough about Star Wars. Today, in memory of Spock’s departure from these earthly bounds, I thought I’d dedicate the post to quotes from him and other characters in Star Trek – a science fiction series dedicated to depicting the ultimate triumph of good over evil. So hold that thought: Good Will Out. Eventually.

“She canna take any more, captain. She's gonna blow!” – Scotty

"Without followers, evil cannot spread." — Spock

"We must acknowledge once and for all that the purpose of diplomacy is to prolong a crisis." – Spock

"They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. The line must be drawn here, this far, no farther." – Picard

"Believing oneself to be perfect is often the sign of a delusional mind."Data

“‘With the first link the chain is forged; the first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.’ Those words were uttered…as wisdom and warning. The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged.” - Captain Picard, quoting JudgeAaron Satie

"Truth is an excuse for a lack of imagination."Garak

"Insufficient facts always invite danger." — Spock,

Fascinating is a word I use for the unexpected, in this case I would think interesting would suffice.” — Spock

"Humans do have an amazing capacity for believing what they choose - and excluding that which is painful." - Spock

"Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." — Spock

Chang: "To be or not to be. That is the question that preoccupies our people, Captain Kirk. We need breathing room."

Kirk: "Earth. Hitler. 1938."

And although this quote is from Star Wars, the other science fiction franchise depicting the seemingly endless fight between good and evil, I thought I should wrap up with a quote from Ajit Pai, one of the minority Republican FCC Commissioners, after the FCC passed broadband rules regulating the internet:

Friday, February 27, 2015

I’ve been perplexed for six years as to why Hillary-the-Inevitable has already been deemed our next president. Likewise, I didn’t understand the Dems insistence on continually pumping up the deflated War on Women balloon and attempting to send it aloft again…and again when it clearly hasn’t been ready for prime time since the ‘80’s.

Mylar; perfect.

Then, as I was reading Daniel Henninger’s column, Captain America Won’t Save Us, it hit me: it was all part of “the deal” as I’ll explain in a bit.

You have to feel sorry for the Democrats. In a world warming to presidential politics, what do they talk to each other about? Nearly two years from the election, they’ve already got their launch vehicle in place, former everything Hillary Clinton . Fire and forget.

The one-time First Lady, U.S. senator and Secretary of State pumped up a political crowd in Silicon Valley this week by vowing, presumably as president, to “crack every last glass ceiling.”

The article goes on to explain that the other camp suffers from the opposite problem: the Republicans have more candidates for the number one slot than the Westminster Dog Show.

It’s all great fun. But there’s something a little off about the Republican presidential conversation right now. It doesn’t come close to reflecting the seriousness of the task facing voters in 2016: Elect a successor to the most catastrophic American presidency in over 80 years. And it ain’t over yet.

Instead of offering an anxious electorate a recognizable alternative to this status quo, the Republicans look like they’re obsessed with discovering Captain America.

Okay…I’m good with that

We’ll get back to that, butt I still couldn’t get past the first two paragraphs about Hillary being a slam-dunk:

I said “dunk”

Why can’t Republicans be more like Democrats? The Dems have been planning for winning the 2016 election since 2008. In fact it was part of winning the ‘08 election; “the deal” between the Clintons and the Obama camp. When it became obvious that BO had somehow out-charmed the lovely Hillary with the press, that he was going to win the nomination and go on to be deigned America’s first real black president, the deal with the Clintons was struck. In return for their support Hillary would not only get the Secretary of State position to develop her foreign affairs bona fides, butt the O-camp would spend the next 8 years ginning up the “war on women” machine to such a fevered pitch that by the time Hilz ran the country would be as emotionally attached to the idea of breaking through that imaginary “glass ceiling” to elect the country’s first Magic Female president as they had been to elect the first “Magic Negro.”

So don’t expect the Republican’s War on Women!® to go away anytime soon.

Mr. Henninger goes on to explain that in normal times it might not matter how the Republicans - without a coherent message or strategy – go about selecting a candidate; butt these are definitely NOT normal times:

The task that Barack Obama is dumping on the next U.S. president, of either party, is overwhelming.

Here’s the job description: Needed, a U.S. president able to confront a world in chaos, rebuild shattered alliances, revive the country’s demoralized intelligence services and senior officer corps, manage foreign and domestic demands with a budget that will be drained for years by fantastically expensive debt servicing, and along the way restore public faith in an array of deeply politicized federal bureaucracies—Justice, HHS, EPA, Labor, Internal Revenue, the NLRB, FCC, EEOC, even the Federal Reserve.

That - plus allowing Iran to go nuclear, ignoring the nation’s immigration laws and ruining our health care system by cramming ObamaKare down our throats – pretty much summarizes the things that most everyone here is so frustrated about. And it also explains our current state of mind regarding the team that can’t shoot straight, which of course doesn’t matter if the whole team’s going to form a circular shooting squad anyway.

So what to do? Unfortunately Mr. Henninger leaves us hanging, lamenting that it’s up to the “big donors” to dictate real policy to the candidates. Are you kidding! That’s exactly what gave us the current regime! And if Hillary turns to her “big donors” to dictate policy, that glass ceiling she just smashed through is very likely to leave some nasty marks:

"She tweets about women's rights in this country and takes money from governments that deny women the most basic human rights.” – Carly Fiorina, CPAC February 26

So I’m afraid this time I can’t take Mr. Henninger’s advice. I’m going to continue to look for Captain America, because he/she’s out there, and just trust me: it ain’t Jeb Bush. (h/tGerard)

Why did Jeb Bush outlaw dwarf tossing? Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!

So sure, it would be nice if the Republicans could get their act together, butt until they do I suggest we continue to analyze all the balloons they’re floating:

Thursday, February 26, 2015

What better way to start your day than with a video of our Secretary of State criticizing Prime Minister Netanyahu for “profoundly forward leaning” with respect to Bush’s war against Iraq? You know, the war that Jean Carré was for before he was against?

“Actually, for the record, George W. Bush won that war. Barack Obama lost it to ISIS.” – Gateway Pundit

“There has now been injected a degree of partisanship, which is not only unfortunate, I think it’s destructive of the fabric of the relationship.”

You know what else is destructive to the fabric of a relationship? Not supporting an ally against an enemy who has repeatedly threatened its annihilation. You know, one of those fundamentally “existential” threats that Big Guy doesn’t believe exist in the Age of Obama (aside from Global Warming).

Okay, it was just a model of our battleship Nimitz, butt still: I’m concerned that the people we are negotiating with appear to be only slightly less delusional than our own chief negotiators.

SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: And frankly – and last thing, this is counterintuitive but it’s true: Our citizens, our world today is actually, despite ISIL, despite the visible killings that you see and how horrific they are, we are actually living in a period of less daily threat to Americans and to people in the world than normally— less deaths, less violent deaths today than through the last century. And so even the concept of state war has changed in many people’s minds, and we’re seeing now more asymmetrical kinds of struggles.

So don’t worry; those non-Islamist young Jihadi-jobseekers are just practicing their non-terrorist “asymmetrical kind of struggles” around the globe. And you are now safer than you’ve ever been – statistically speaking, which is the only way delusional people like Secretary of State Jean Carré speak.

And speaking of lies and statistics reminds me - can we now get on with our War on Global Warming? Everybody knows that’s the only real existential threat we face.

And since the Lucy and Desi pilot went so well I understand we are planning a whole comedy series in which MO and BO will explain other important schtuff to our low-fo voters. Next up will be our take on why the “monumental bare-faced power grab for control of the Internet” is good for you. Like ObamaKare, I understand it will be written and performed as a fairy tale:

Butt Jonathan Gruber’s cameo has been cut.

Here’s a peak at the story board:

“So here is prince Barack, at the tech city gates, demanding the keys. Not that he will know what to do with it after obtaining them. But possession of the bauble is in the first instance enough.”

“Regulation is an absorbing state like the Hotel California. You can try to check out any time you like, but once inside you can never really leave. Three hundred pages of regulation will become 301 … 302 … A new administration might slow down the rate of growth, but it can never reverse it.”

7 feet high, and growing

Oh, you want to know the moral? Spoiler Alert! It’s the same as ObamaKare: it’s free, butt you still can’t afford it.

Because there really isn’t any such thing as a free lunch. Or if there is, it’s not going to be anything you want to eat.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

I don’t know what’s worse; that Big Guy keeps making videos like this while ISIS continues to kidnap, rape, torture and kill it’s way across the Middle East…

Or that he looks so natural while doing it.

In fact, he’s so good at acting that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences could have avoided all the bad press about being too white simply by awarding Barry a well deserved Lifetime Achievement Oscar.

Butt getting back to Lady M’s big 5 year anniversary:

Okay, get on your mark, get set…

5 sit ups:

Our “sitting” president

5 mile run

5 vegetables:

Now get out there and #gimmefive! In fact, #gimmeten! Gimme, gimme, gimme!

Monday, February 23, 2015

I don’t know about you, butt I needed a little break from politics and the real world and what better place to find respite from reality than in Hollywood? So I made myself a martini (gin, dry, with a twist) and watched the Oscars. Thankfully I hadn’t seen any of the movies nominated except Whiplash which was a big, big hit at last year’s Sundance Festival. I thought it was crappy butt then I guess in Hollywood a movie about a sadistic music teacher is considered a nice change of pace.

Surprisingly, most of the frocks this year weren’t as hideous as they’ve become over the recent past. In fact, some of them were quite attractive:

Jennifer Hudson and Rosamund Pike

While others were, well, interesting;

Like Anna’s angel wings, and Gwyneth with that humongous rosebud plopped on her shoulder. Dear, dear Gwyneth; perhaps a little more “conscious uncoupling” might be in order. That rosebud appears to weigh even heavier on your delicate shoulders than it did on Orson Welles’.

Overall though, the show was pretty dull and there were no big surprises; the winners were long winded and American Sniper didn’t win in any category other than largest box office revenues.

Clint and Bradley Cooper

I distracted myself by noting some uncanny resemblances among the glitterati. Take Marion Cotillard for example: I couldn’t get over how much she looked like former “Money Honey” Maria Bartiromo:

Marion and Maria: separated at birth?

And take a gander at Jeff Goldblum – I haven’t seen him in years and I swear, give him a cigar and he could pass for Milton Berle!

Twin sons of a different mother?

And then there was this freaky duo: Dakota Johnson and her Mother, the actress formerly known as Melanie Griffith. Just yikes!

And speaking of freaky things, Lady Gaga performed a medley of Julie Andrews songs from The Sound of Music for no apparent reason other than her publicist was able to buy Gaga a timeslot on the interminable program in order to bolster her lagging sales. Surprisingly she sang rather well, butt she sure doesn’t look much like Julie Andrews, nor does she make a very good nun.

She actually looks more like Hills, if she’d slap a little red lipstick on those sour lips.

Come to think of it, Lady Gaga looks a lot like Uncle Milty too!

Get that babe a cigar!

Anyway, there were, of course, the usual political agendas being beaten by Oscar winners, just in case the audience wasn’t already bored to tears.

“We know that right now the struggle for freedom and justice is real,” he said. “We live in the most incarcerated country in the world. There are more black men under correctional control today than were under slavery in 1850.”

Hmmm. If I weren’t on a break from politics today I would certainly ponder on that for awhile.

And then Patricia Arquette, who won best supporting actress in something or other, chose to use her likely only trip to the Oscar podium to lead the charge against the Republicans’ War on Women:

“It is time for us. It is time for women. …The truth is even though we sort of feel like there is, there are huge issues that are at play and really do affect women. It’s time for all the women in America, and the men who love women and all the gay people and people of color we’ve all fought for to fight for us now.”

Got that? I think she’s also enlisted in Lady M’s War on Food army:

So there you have it: a whole evening filled with a bunch of vacuous people glad handing, fawning and pandering to another bunch of vacuous, fawning, panderers. All the while the booze, drugs and food flow magically and everyone get’s a looty bag of gifts to take home; come to think of it, that’s just another normal day around here. Well, except that Neil Patrick Harris doesn’t usually run around in his tighty whities. That honor’s reserved for somebody who shall remain nameless.